Poshed up plonk

Lately I've been rubbish.  No, scratch that, I've always been rubbish, but lately I've been rubbisher.  I keep forgetting birthdays.  I have a birthday book with birthdays in it, but I seem to be incapable of consulting it.  Even when I KNOW a birthday is coming up, I seem to register it but do nothing about getting a present and card together.  Case in point.  A friend turned 50 last week.  We didn't go to his party as it was in a club and really not our scene, which he was fine about.  So we arranged to meet him and his husband on a different day.  3 days after making this arrangement I suddenly realised a present would be needed!  Cue frantic sewing.

Men are notoriously difficult to sew for, but I had a plan.  He loves red wine, so a nice bottle of plonk with a wine cosy like this one I made for my brother at Christmas.  Mr CA was dispatched to buy a bottle of nice wine and came home with a bottle of VERY nice (read - expensive) wine.  A wine cosy was duly whipped up using the Moda Bakeshop tutorial.  I even made a little bow tie to complete the look.  Sorted.

Or not.  The wine you see in this cosy is a £5 bottle of red.  The fancy-pants wine was in a different size bottle to the normal and didn't fit.  When we first tried it and I discovered this, I could have cried.  You see, I'd decided to improve on the Bakeshop pattern, I didn't like the way the raw edges of the base piece were on show, so I sewed and turned.  The circle was too small.  I sewed and turned again.  It was still too small!  One more try and it worked.

The decision was taken (by me) to buy another bottle of wine and present him with both!  I used all black for the outside and a burgundy for the inside to give it a tuxedo-look.  And look what I discovered!  You can sew buttons on with a sewing machine!  Yes, I know, you all knew this already!  Hand sewing in the middle of a machine sewing project annoys the hell out of me.  If I'm machining, I'm machining, I'm not stopping to thread a needle and sit down and hand sew so I avoid it where-ever possible.

I whipped up the bow tie without plan or pattern.  I'd run out of the black elastic used for the button fasteners (I think it came off a clothing tag or something as I only had a small loop of it) so I added some cord to tie the bowtie at the back.  I think it looks rather smart.

I think that when I next make one of these, and I will as it's such a good gift for a bloke, I'll whip up a few to keep in reserve.   Ooh look, you can see me in my pjs, greasy hair scrapped back in the reflection!  Great photo Wendy.

I found the photo of the Zakka Style pencil case with the crochet hooks in it.

See?  Much better than the pencils!

This weekend has lots of treats in store for me, birthday meals (not mine) and a lovely trip to the vets for Colin and Ellis to have their jabs.  Oh the joy.


  

Christmas Countdown - December

So once again I've been joining in with Allie's Christmas Through The Year - the final installment!

Want to see my roundup of what I've made?

1 - 6: Teacup candles

7-8: 2 sets of wax tarts for burners

9: Cross stitch cushion

10: Table runner

11: Wine Bottle Cosy

12-13: Wash bags

14-19: Spa Kits

Which actually adds up to more than 19 presents, because the spa kit itself is a bag and contains:

20-25: Spa slippers

26-31: Eye mask

32-37: Crocheted wash cloth

38-47: Homemade soap

48-57: Home made bath bombs

And there's more!!  In the photographless category we have:

58-63: Glass candles

64-70: Birdfeeders

Not a bad effort!  I've still got some work to do, but I've still got a few days (including two full days where I don't have to go to work).  My list of things to make is:

1. Finish off the 6 glass candles I've made (just topping up around the wick)

2. Sew up the glasses cases

3. Crochet 3 x scrubbies

4: Crochet 1 x washcloth

5: Crochet 1 x keyboard duster

6: Crochet Yoda ami

7: Crochet ami pig

8: Finish the bird feeders

9: Assemble cookies in jars

10: Assemble the reinbeer

Numbers 6 and 7 can be left off if I run out of time, so I'm feeling pretty confident that Christmas will be ready!

Poshed up wine

Oh, I forgot to tell you about the work Christmas party, the one I was dreading?  It was great fun!  I managed to avoid those colleagues that I didn't wish to speak to whilst having a good time at the blackjack table and the buffet with those colleagues I like!

Today I've got another present to show you, this one is for my brother who is partial to a nice bottle of Rioja.  I hope it's a nice bottle I've bought, I wouldn't know, I hate red wine.  I wanted to dress it up and this wine bottle cosy seemed perfect.  Actually, perfect is not quite the right word...  I think US bottles of wine must be thinner than UK bottles...  The first attempt didn't fit.  I'll show you and try to explain though I didn't take any failure pictures as I was far too busy cursing.

It's made from layer cake squares of Petit Ecole.  If you look at the tutorial you'll see that I sewed the two pieces up the wrong way!  It's supposed to have two different fabric designs horizontally, not vertically! 

I didn't think to check the fit before I sewed, so I handsewed the buttons to the layer of fabric and wadding, then added the elastic ties (which were a bugger to sew), then I sewed the front to the lining and turned... luckily I checked the fit before topsewing or that would have been even more unpicking to do!

There was no way I was re-sewing those buttons and elastic, so I cut the wadding away, unpicked the seam joining the two pieces and sewed an extra strip in there.  I needed an extra 2 inches!  The annoying thing is that I was telling myself it didn't look big enough but the wine was downstairs and I was up on the top floor and I'm very lazy.

That stripey strip is the extra 2 inches.  I had to do the same for the lining piece.

Due to the unfittingness of the cosy, I had to redo the bottom piece, for the second time!  The pattern said to cut 3 circles - one lining fabric, one outer fabric and one wadding, then sew them together.  So I did.  Except they didn't line themselves up very well (yes, that's right, I'm avoiding the responsibility there!), so I had to do it again, this time cutting larger squares, drawing on the stitching line and cutting out afterwards.  So I then had to repeat that step with a larger base piece!

I don't know if I misunderstood the sewing instruction for the base piece, but I think it looks really messy due to the raw edges... by this point, there was NO WAY I was redoing it!

Perfectionist?  Me?  Not in the slightest!